ARC REVIEW Last Chance Cowboys: The Drifter by Anna Schmidt

Anna Schmidt bring us the first book in the series Where the Trails Ends. The Drifter is a  Historical Western Romance, this is a genre I love but rarely find myself reading, much like steampunk. I grabbed this because of it's genre and the description, I almost didn't because Anna Schmidt other books are not usually books I read, but the description really did catch my attention. I am glad I did because it was really good. I would put it up there in my favorites along with Joan Johnston's  Sisters of the Lonestar State series. Anna Schmidt has a beautiful narrative and great characters. The descriptive setting was something else, it really pulled me in and set the scene remarkable well. It takes place at a time where ranchers weren't governed as well as they should have been and the larger ones were swallowing up all the smaller ranches and when they couldn't buy their way they would use any means necessary to obtain the land. It reminded me at certain points of the T.V. movie The Jack Bull, originally a novel written by Heinrich von Kleist. So it's no wonder that I kept imagining a buff John Cusack as Chet.

Maria Potterfield lost her father, her brother ran off with the inheritance and her mother has not been handling the death very well at all. Maria is left with running the ranch, and taking care of her two younger siblings and her mother. Knowing the ins and outs of handling the ranch and it's cattle is easy it's convincing the high handed foreman she knows what she's doing that's the hard part. When he gives her the ultimatum that he'll just quit she doesn't give in and tells him to leave, the very same day a drifter breezes in and asks for a job. That night the herd gets spooked and stampedes, the drifter stays out until every last one is found. Spurring Maria to offer him the foreman job which he turns down.

Chet is running from his past on his way to his dreams of owning his own land in California the stop at the little Arizona ranch was just supposed to be temporary, but the beautiful owner, Maria is just tempting enough to stay. Maria is having more problems than just missing herd and no water, the large rancher next door keeps offering to buy but she say no every time. With problems piling on top of each other and finding out her father's death might not be an accident and the only person she can trust is Chet. But the jealous foreman who thinks he is more important than he really is. Chet and Maria fight an instant attraction and try to stay away the appearance of Chet's past almost derails the romance but when they finally give in to the instant attraction they can't let anyone know. They must keep it a secret until they track down the traitor in the mists.

Overall, this is a book I plan to buy and keep. I look forward to the rest of the series.